PBS goes deep into recorded music history in 'Soundbreaking'

The eight-part documentary series "Soundbreaking" debuts on PBS November 14.(Photo: PBS)

PBS isn't just dramas for Anglophiles and news investigations for truth seekers. The oasis of quality can rock out with the best of them, as it does with "Soundbreaking," a series about the culture-quaking history of recorded music that premieres on Detroit Public Television (WTVS, Channel 56) at 10 p.m. Monday and runs through November 23.

The remarkable and long eight-part documentary is the last project of the late Sir George Martin, the producer whose buttoned-down demeanor belied the appetite for experimentation that he brought to the recordings of the Beatles. As Ringo Star says of the band's immersion in the album-making process, "The studio was a strange place, full of, like, crazy scientists and electricians and madmen." Nobody helped the Beatles realize their creative ideas more than Martin, whose contributions have been chronicled by countless print and visual journalists.

But "Soundbreaking" is Martin's tribute to innovations in recorded music across the decades. Filmmakers Maro Chermayeff and Jeff Dupre have stitched together fascinating archival footage and excerpts from 150-plus interviews with artists and producers, a list that includes Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Beck, Eric Clapton, Neneh Cherry, Questlove and Detroit's own Don Was – a virtual music who's who hopscotching across genres and decades.

The eight-part documentary series "Soundbreaking" debuts on PBS November 14.(Photo: PBS)

The men and women portrayed here are explorers of recorded sound often working without a map. As rap forefather Chuck D says of the birth and growth of hip-hop, "People were headed toward something that they didn't know." One of the highlights is Thursday's episode on going electric, which has a segment on Stevie Wonder's break from the Motown formula in the early 1970s, when he unleashed an epic stretch of recording that's described as walking into the studio and not leaving for five years. By the time it was over, the creative burst gave birth to 1976's "Songs in the Key of Life," a synthesizer-laced masterpiece of social relevance and timeless melody.

"It was like they were working on Frankenstein, I mean, just up all day all night, coming up with these nuance and timbres," says Wonder's keyboardist and music director Greg Phillinganes (another Detroit native). The stories of "Soundbreaking" will make you give thanks for this November programming television treat and the technical geniuses behind the soundtracks of your life.